Life Behind the Curve

***This post needs much less of a warning than parts one and two of this story. No swearing, not particularly graphic and nothing specifically about pregnancy. Hope it’s a bit of an easier read. Thank you all, again, for your support.***

The doctor in the ER had warned that the bleeding may continue for a while but would taper off and eventually abate. Certainly it wouldn’t take more than a few weeks.
 
I bled for a month solid. At one point I bled so much I called the on-call doctor, who happened to be Dr. D&C, and I was prescribed Methergine, a drug to control bleeding from the uterus. It’s so powerful you can only take so much of it over a period of days. He said if the bleeding didn’t stop within 24 hours to call back and he’d have me come in for an emergency D&C. When I called back the next day, a different doctor was on call (this is a huge practice, perhaps 12 doctors or so). She said a D&C would not be necessary and to give the Methergine another day but no more than that. I did and the bleeding stopped.

But I continued to bleed off-and-on. I told my boss (not the married/no kids one but the married/mom of four boys one) that I wasn’t looking forward to seeing Dr. D&C again. She hooked me up with her doctor and friend who was, coincidentally, in the same practice as Dr. D&C. She called and left a message for this new doctor who called me on my cell phone to set up an appointment. On January 7th I went to see her.
 
OMG this woman was amazing. She’s one of the top OB/GYNs in the area. When I got there, she was sympathetic. I talked. She listened. I half-heartedly said I wanted a hysterectomy. She asked if we wanted more kids. I said I didn’t know. I was scared. I asked if I had to see that awful nurse practitioner I saw for my first appointment if I did get pregnant. She put her hand on my shoulder and said, “If you try, when you try, call me as soon as you get a positive test. I’ll have your hormone levels checked all throughout your first trimester.” I know that checking my hormone levels won’t prevent another miscarriage, but she was expressing concern. What a refreshing change.

We got down to more immediate issues. She explained that there was a chance my body hadn’t expelled everything though the ultrasound from my ER trip seemed to indicate that it had. She ordered an hCG level test (to see if there was any pregnancy hormone left) and yet another ultrasound. I told her what Dr. D&C had said about the chance that I’d need a D&C. She said she doubted that was necessary. She prescribed birth control at a low dose (I hadn’t been on any type of BC since a few months after our wedding) and said I’d get a call the following day to report the hCG test results. If my levels were normal (my body was no longer producing pregnancy hormone), I was to start taking the pill. It wasn’t so I did.

At that appointment, she also said something I knew but really needed to hear. “Your body needs a break.” She told me to take the first three weeks’ worth of pills and then, instead of taking the placebo, start a new pack, meaning I shouldn’t get another period for six weeks. Hallelujah! This is the kind of doctor I needed.
 
I went in for the ultrasound she had prescribed and, once again, found out that there was nothing left of this pregnancy.

I got a bill for my ER visit. Despite having decent employer-sponsored insurance, I had to pay more to miscarry my pregnancy on the floor of the ER bathroom than I paid to have one induction and two C-Sections, both with a five day hospital stay.

Two weeks after starting BC, I missed a pill. Despite taking two pills (as directed) the next day, I bled for two more days. A week later, as instructed, I started the second pack of pills. I think my body must have been on a hair trigger because the following week I missed one pill and bled for two weeks straight. It took me taking two pills a day for four days straight to stop.

A week went by. No missed pills. No bleeding.

Scoot and I went with my brother-in-law and his starting-to-show pregnant wife to Las Vegas around President’s Day. It was a Christmas present that she and I had given our husbands that year. While we were wandering around the southern end of the strip, my BIL noticed one of those exhibits like Bodies: The Exhibition (those human bodies preserved in silicone) and said he wanted to go. Scoot had no desire to see it and, I think my SIL already had. I don’t have a weak stomach. I’ve seen two autopsies, an organ harvest and a heart transplant. I’d heard a lot about the exhibit and thought it might be interesting, so my BIL and I went.

What I didn’t know was that they had an entire room dedicated to prenatal “specimens.” It was cordoned off in such a way that you came to a wall that said some feel-good thing about the beginning of life and warning that it was graphic. My BIL asked if I’d be ok. I took a deep breath and said yes. I turned the corner. The room was full of embryos, fetuses, babies of all gestational ages. My heart stopped. I couldn’t breathe. I feel like I absorbed every item in that room in one blink. I freaked out. I ran from the room crying hysterically. My BIL followed me out and asked if I was ok. Yes, I said while taking deep breaths and trying to convince him – and myself – that it was true. Please, go ahead and go in. I’ll wait on the other side. When he came out, I had calmed down somewhat. He apologized. I told him he didn’t need to. I felt bad for freaking. I wanted to be happy about pregnancy. I wanted to be amazed by it. But I just wasn’t.

Bleeding-wise, the Vegas trip was uneventful, but out of the blue, on February 26th, I had heavy bleeding. I kept taking the pills. It stopped. I took more pills. On March 3rd I passed a large clot and had light bleeding. OK, seriously? WTF is going on here? I mean, I figured out my body just can’t afford to miss pills but COME ON!

Sometime during this period, I remember shutting the door to my office and bursting into tears. It was not an uncommon occurrence by that point but I was starting to feel like I was at the end of my rope. I called Scoot. He was worried. “What’s wrong?”

“I don’t know, honey. But I’m not ok,” I told him.

He calmed me down. I called the doctor’s office. I told the receptionist that I was a patient, that I’d had a miscarriage, and that I wasn’t ok. (It was the only way I could describe myself.) She asked if something was physically wrong. No, I said, but the NP had told me at that first appointment that if I needed to talk to someone I could call for a referral. The receptionist wasn’t quite sure what to do. I told her to forget about it and hung up. I cried some more. A lot more. I never got help.

I went to my primary care physician for something unrelated and told her about the continued intermittent bleeding. She ordered yet another ultrasound and changed me from BC pills to Nuvaring so I wouldn’t have to worry about what would happen if I missed a pill.

She asked if I was ok. “No,” I told her. She said, “I know. I’ve been through it too. If you need someone to talk to, we can get you help.”

“No, it’s alright,” I replied. “When should I go in for my ultrasound?”

I never went. I knew what it would show.

Things turned up with the Nuvaring. I loved it. It was so easy and convenient and I didn’t have to worry about causing a two week bleeding spree by missing a single pill.

Later that month, I started to play soccer again. I needed to try to lose some of the weight that I had packed on while eating out nearly every night because I couldn’t bring myself to make dinner. At halftime of the first game I went to stretch my groin in the butterfly position (sitting down, feet together, knees out). I saw what looked like a pinkish stain on my grey compression shorts I wore under my soccer shorts. I went to the bathroom at the field. I had blood everywhere. I jerry-rigged a “pad” out of paper towels and toilet paper and returned to the field. When I got home I took the Nuvaring out and let yet more blood and yet more tears come.

I went back to the doctor. I was told to get a refill, use the ring for three weeks, then remove it and replace it with another. Again, I should have gone six weeks without bleeding. Again it failed. At $35 a pop, I was starting to fall out of love with my Nuvaring. I went back to the doctor. She prescribed a stronger pill. $5 a month. I’ve been on that pill every since. A year and a half later, I can finally say I’m back to normal. Well, mostly. If I miss taking one in the morning, I’ll bleed by 2 pm. When I exercise hard, like I do when I play soccer or when I was training for my first 5K last summer, I sometimes bleed. It’s all kinds of awesome. I want to stop taking it, but I’m scared of the blood. I’m scared of another pregnancy. I’m scared of another miscarriage. I can’t, I won’t, live in fear forever.